Where there's a 'Will,' there's a way

This is your life, Will Holbert. What are you going to do with it? It's a question you ask yourself every day.

You're 17, you lost your dad to cancer just over nine months ago and your dream of going to college on an athletic scholarship - for that matter, an academic scholarship - took a giant hit after you suffered three injuries and endured five surgeries in four months.

You've missed a ton of school, but what do you expect when your leg looked like you'd just pulled it out of a shark's mouth; what else can you do when your doctor tells you to stay home and watch the gaping wound close itself, a gash that was so long and wide you could've probably stuck your hand into it.

Now, after another skin graft you're healing and back at Carson High, the activity a welcome change from sitting at home alone while your mother, Christine, goes off to work and your 15-year-old brother Tim and 13-year-old sister Amber go off to school.

THOUGHTS

Not many people know what it's like, keeping yourself company, trying not to think about the bad things; like watching your "wound pack," a sponge that looks like a giant leech with a vacuum tube attached to it suck the poison out of the giant hole in your right leg.

What do you say to people when they tell you they're worried you might lose your leg or die after a staph infection invades your weakened body? All you can do is take 20 pills a day - antibiotics that attempt to kill the infection before it kills you first.

You're young - not yet a man, no longer a boy - and anxious to prove you can handle anything. And like a real man, you don't talk about things you believe make you seem weak.

But in the silence, thoughts swirl like cyanide, thoughts you'd rather not have, that take you to that dark, negative place...

You know better than most the limits of medical technology and willpower.

Your dad, Bill Holbert, did his best to act like everything was all right, didn't he?

He tried to be strong, to play it off and deny there was something wrong with his stomach and even when the doctors found out it was cancer...But you don't want to go there right now.

It's best not to dwell on such things. It's easier to play a video game or watch ESPN or talk with some of your friends and basketball teammates like Paul Cagle and David Eller. It's more fun to trip on the JabbaWockies, America's best dance crew, on MTV.

It's better to talk about anything other than explaining why you won't accept your father's clothes or call your home number just to be able to hear his voice, which is still on the answering machine.

And there's a reason you're not erasing that voice, letting him slip away forever.

He knew about things you're still figuring out, didn't he? He knew what it was like to be the man of the house. And now, passed from father to son, a dubious gift that you wish was longer in coming.

There's the necessity of thinking about things like recessions and watching your mom, a strong woman of faith, pushing aside her own grief, sacrificing and taking one for her team - her three kids - and going off to work to supplement whatever limited help social security brings in helping to pay the bills.

FEELINGS

Hard times make hard men, Will, and as the man of the house you feel you have to step up, right? Things happen for a reason. Get the bad luck out of the way early. Bite the bullet. Step up to the plate. Do what men do.

It takes a group of defenders to stop you on the football field, but now you've hit a brick wall. Sure is a big market out there for teenage athletes without a high school diploma, isn't there?

And being seven months behind in your schoolwork with three months to go in your senior year isn't going to induce any colleges to roll out an academic red carpet.

The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association has stepped up and offered you a chance to attend Carson as a fifth-year senior beginning in August, but people around school seem to think it's an example of an athlete getting a break so he can play sports.

"Getting a break." If they only knew.

Even if that were the case - and it's not - there's just the little matter of what could happen if you suffer the same injury - lower extremity lateral compartment syndrome - again.

But that's another dark thought, another no-fly zone that can be avoided by going out and playing some pick-up basketball at the community center.

See? You're recovering already. You're out of the house and the dark thoughts dissipate. And by the time football season comes back around, you'll have seven months of no contact in before you step back out on the football field and do what you do best: perform.

THE THRILL

You have the kind of skill set that can change the complexion of a game in seconds. Isn't that why your teammates call you "Inspector Gadget?" You're lightning fast and can play wide receiver or make things happen as a running back.

Heck, even when you're on the bench with your wound pack on, you got up and buried six straight 3-pointers as your basketball team warmed up.

Cagle and Eller told a reporter they looked to you to fire them up. No way around it, playing sports is in your blood. It kills you to watch instead of play.

And, face it, you're an attention magnet. You love to perform. Whether it's nailing the three on the court, finding a seam on the gridiron and breaking loose for a touchdown or, for that matter, busting out some dance moves that just aren't taught, you love the limelight.

No wonder your dad got so charged up at your games. He was the loudest guy in the crowd. As you mom says, he was your biggest fan.

He taught you a lot of great things, your dad. Remember when you felt that football coach Shane Quilling shouldn't be telling an athlete like you how to play when you were a freshman?

You showed him. You didn't play for him as a sophomore. But your dad taught you how to listen, didn't he? He said there was more to the game than just showing up and playing.

A lot of people are trying to give you advice, but there's really no one like him, is there? He knew how to talk to you and now here you are, trying to teach yourself the lessons that only come with time, age and experience.

LESSON LEARNED

Don't you hate it when you see athletes who have all of the tools in the world screw up and take their talent for granted?

Lying there with your buddy, Mr. Wound Pack, keeping you company, you thought about how you didn't make the most of your talents, how you were young then, having a good time now and again instead of realizing just how precious and rare a chance to achieve your dreams were.

There is a reason that the cliché "you don't know what you have till it's gone" is a cliché, that things and people you take for granted can quickly disappear and that there is no such thing as forever.

First you had your dad taken away from you. Then, against Reno, there was that week where you thought you had a broken ankle. Luckily, it was just the way your bones were growing - or something - and you were back on the field again.

But that was just another one of life's endless cruel jokes. In your first game back, you found out what lateral compartment syndrome was and there went the football season. One surgery followed by another - this one a skin graft - took away the game you loved.

But you come from good stock, Will. Like your father, you showed some fight. Other kids would've been devastated beyond repair, losing nearly all that mattered to them inside a span of five months.

You, however, showed character. You returned to that basketball court and nearly made it all the way back, almost showed life that you, not it, were behind the steering wheel. You were feeling good again.

Down in Los Angeles, clowning around with Eller, you gave him a punch to the butt. Thinking it was the other leg that had been injured, he playfully gave you a knee to the leg.

No big deal, right?

At least until your leg blew up again, this time on the flight back home. There was Eller, feeling guilty and carrying your bags for you because you were limping. Meanwhile, like an inner tube, your leg kept swelling on the way back to Carson from the airport in Reno.

And then it was back under the knife - twice in the same night.

Maybe somewhere down deep you knew you had to get out of that hospital, because your dad wasn't able to. Maybe, as you risked infection by waiting for the wound to close, you felt your mortality.

Facing a trip to what lies beyond this illusion we call life, getting a second skin graft and having two legs full of scars isn't such a high price to pay to hang around. And this time, you're going to give it 100 percent and make it happen.

OPTIONS

So what now, Will Holbert?

You can ignore all those who don't have a clue what you've been going through; you can take your second chance at your senior season as the gift it really is.

You can buckle down and become the best student you can possibly be - maybe even do well enough to qualify for financial aid at college.

You can listen to the doctor who told you there's no reason in the world for you to suffer the same lateral compartment injury again. Just as there was no reason - at least that he could find - for it to happen the first time.

Or the second time.

And that's your choice. You are the only one challenging yourself now. Only you can decide if showing courage, playing the game you love and earning a football scholarship is worth taking the chance of another injury - or worse.

Or maybe you can look for why things happen in the order they do. Look back on being one of the only white kids in a Las Vegas school that was 90-percent full of minorities. How you adapted to that dancing culture of the African American students - how instead of growing up hip, you grew up hip hop.

Maybe you can earn your high school diploma and check out that hip hop dance academy in New York. Seriously, how cool would it be to be a like the JabbaWockies or be a back-up dancer for the next music superstar? Who knows where that would lead?

Your mom and dad have taught you well. Your coaches and teammates and friends think you're a great kid. They - like your dad - believe in you. You're a gifted athlete and dancer and can do anything you set your mind to.

And one day, perhaps years down the road, you can even force yourself to visit that haunted place where you've avoided going and make your peace with the indescribable pain you keep bottled up inside. You can go have a private one-on-one talk with your dad.

He may tell you something you already know down deep inside, but need to hear anyway: You were forced to become a man too soon, Will, but take a look at your leg. What better proof that time heals all wounds.